A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
That's not a biochemist, memorizing the amino acids is literally biochem 1 on college. Most people with a biology undergrad take that.
Being a biochemist is more about understanding the whole system of how proteins interact, and not really about memorization of any specific protein.
I had to take a 300 level biochem class and 2 semesters of O Chem and we didn’t have to memorize the structures of all the amino acids. Like we had to know glycine and we had to know about the different amino acids like how proline has a rigid structure but we were never expected to be able to draw an amino acid from memory
This may be a university to university and course to course difference too. My intro 3000 level biochem class didn't have us memorize structures but my 5000 structural biochem class did and certain nucleic acid structures and stuff. Can't remember shit now but I definitely had to memorize them at some point in undergrad.
Well, biochemists do know the structure of amino acids, so it's technically correct. The fact they know more makes this situation even more probable.
I've once overheard a conversation in the train where someone said "but cholesterol is good, right? Or are those proteins?" completely unironically. It got a good chuckle from me and several other people in the train.
I eventually learned he was becoming a PE teacher who made diet plans for schools. That was less funny.
Perhaps surprisingly, dietary cholesterol has less an effect on blood cholesterol than a handful of other things. Saturated fat intake/balance in diet correlates more strongly, and vitamin D levels negatively correlates (vitamin D deficiency positively correlates).
Dietary cholesterol is used for a lot of key things such as hormone production, so some people might actually want to increase their cholesterol intake (super active lifestyle people like endurance athletes - can help combat RED-S aka Female Athlete Triad), but the elephant in the room for bad lipid profiles is saturated fats, refined sugars, and sedentary lifestyle
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on blood cholesterol, so indeed cholesterol is good or at least not bad
afaik from youtube, HDL is good, LDL is bad.
Yes.
You also need cholesterol in cell membrane structures, hormone synthesis (steroids like testosterone & estradiol), vitamin D, bile acids for digesting fat, and insulating neuron sheaths.
a PE teacher
The old gag:
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who can't teach, teach Phys Ed
Those who can't teach phys Ed, administrate.
Based on the other responses, better to be asking the question than assume he was stupid for asking it.
High cholesterol is "bad" with too much of other fats in your diet, but you need cholesterol to live so your body makes most of it.
E: Correcting the science there, whoops.
Gym myths are my favorite. The best past is the extreme prevalence of survivorship bias, with most of the bad advice coming from people who have succeeded but are themselves mistaken about why.
i.e. Massive bro is adamant that everyone should be taking BCAAs, beginners are inclined to believe it because it looks like he knows what he’s talking about.
I think the fitness industry makes most of its money this way tbh
My wife is one of these consumers. She shes all these influencers pushing working out products and she uses everything she can get her hands on. Then she wonders why when she trains for, and runs a full marathon, she doesnt lose any weight. Well you take thousands of calories of supplements... just run
Yeah you can't run off a bad diet, you do need to make sure you are getting enough protein aligned with your goals, and some fats, but outside of that, you just need to eat less than you burn.
Running might help increase the deficit a bit, or give you some extra food, but you're probably going to struggle to cover thousands of additional calories.
And now they're pointing at that guy who was taking in absurd amounts of calories from meat per day, because they don't realize he had a nutritional deficiency that meant most of it wasn't getting processed.
You can do a similar thing on rice, as it happens, because rice doesn't contain enough B1 and you develop beriberi.
the "sad" reality of fitness is that it just boils down to "do exercise, eat 2 hours before an intense workout, creatine helps give a little strength boost".
There's no magical thing you can do to make things easier/faster other than just going harder or, you know, steroids (which has obvious downsides). And everything else that people tend to worry about, like the precise amount of protein to eat, is just.. like yeah it has an effect but if you just do shitloads of workouts and eat when you're hungry it's basically impossible to not get stronger.
Fundamentally you're right. If you get absolutely everything 100% scientifically perfect for you, your circumstances, your genetics, etc you will always see better results than the person eyeballing it. But its like 200% more effort for an extra 25% gains, the minutiae of this shit goes as deep as you care to look and thats what drowns a lot of new enthusiasts.
I personally take it a step further and question whether the extra 25% is worth it at all.
Even creatine has its downsides, in that it’s a powder you have to pay for and remember to choke down every day. And in the end, all you get is the same progress you would have gotten anyway, just a bit faster.
For me, who cares if what took you 5 years could have been done in 4 if everything was “optimal”? Why are we so obsessed with “optimizing” everything, when in reality this mindset just results in 90% of people giving up?
*I should add I have no critique of someone who wants for themselves every possible advantage, or educates others about it. But presenting these things as being synonymous with the gym is a huge public disservice. It would be like aggressively trying to funnel every single person who wants to buy a car into becoming an F1 driver
They like BCAAs because they think it causes gains.
I like BCAAs because they taste good.
We are not the same.
Sometimes followed by the most cursed unit....grams per pound....
Is that actually a unit that I have just never heard of or am I being dumb and not getting sarcasm? I really hope thats a fake unit
i could see it in a dosage situation. like grams of steroids per pound of user. sure, it's goofy to mix metric and imperial, but that's just what those two things are commonly measured with in America. time spent doing unit conversations is time spent not lifting.
Its a pretty common unit when it comes to discussing dietary protein around bodybuilding and fitness because 1g per lb is a super easy conversion for people to remember. Its kind of the golden number because even for people not getting the best sources of protein 1g per lb almost guarantees anyone other than edge cases and steroid users are getting more than enough to support optimum growth and recovery.
This pic reminds me of a ten-year-old post:
Used to take prework out as a teenager. About a year ago I'd be taking 2 scoops of the strongest shit I could get my hands on. I'd have to spend almost 10 minutes between sets sometimes to keep from puking. Then one day I just thought, what the fuck am I doing. I started lifting to get healthier. And here I am taking in God knows what from a container with a psycho clown that's chewed half his own face off. What the fuck happened. I started with a half a scoop of c4 and now here I am. Who the fuck is this for, am I supposed to be that methhead clown, is that supposed to be appealing? Since then completely gave up prework outs and never looked back
The best way to learn something new but maybe not useful or true is to say an obviously wrong fact on an internet forum with a total confidence.
People will step over themselves to explain it like it is a supermarket opening on a Black Friday morning
It’s a never patched CVE-1980-1 in an internet nerd mind that causes a dump of the victim’s volatile memory
The most infuriating discussion I had online about proteins was with a vegan, their claim was "there is no such thing as essential amino acids". Couldn't get it into their head that a) there are essential amino acids but b) yes, unless you eat so horribly lopsided it's unknown of anywhere but in horribly deprived populations or among some indigenous folks (pretty much only eating manioc or such) there's nothing to worry about, you'll get your essentials. Kinda like Vitamin C deficiency being unheard of in the developed world because even the most gutter-rat of diets still contains enough as an antioxidant. Still not a bad idea to pair beans with rice and lentils with noodles or bread, though, IMNSHO they just taste better that way around.
Especially infuriating as it was a vegan. If you choose to have a diet that requires nutritional knowledge to get right then don't suck at it, and call your fellow travellers out when they're spewing BS. I really doubt vegans are keen on yet another "I stopped being vegan and it fixed my anaemia" story. Take an apple or two. Either eat them, there's your iron, or make a sauce that works with a sour/sweet accent (i.e. chunks of apple) and prepare it in an iron skillet, there, even more iron. It's not hard but you gotta stop pretending that vegans can get by without understanding nutrition.
Gym bro is just trying to distract the giant standing off camera to the right
I know the feeling. I've also been given the stern "don't say anything" look. But joke's on them, because I neither know enough to debunk the most random claims on the spot, nor know how to synthesize a semester worth of college in five sentences and be understood perfectly every time.
Back in my day, we had 20 amino acids and we were happy.
But seriously, what are the other 2, I am presuming we are counting seleno-cystine? and i checked for the other one I had completely forgotten - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrolysine